Plato first constructs the ideal character and shows that it consists in the righteous rule of the intelligent principle in man over the spirit and the appetites. A soul thus in harmony with itself, under the rule of reason, is at once healthy, happy, beautiful, and good. Later, reversing the process, he shows how the good, beautiful, true, healthy condition of the soul may be destroyed through the successive steps of pride, avarice, lawless liberty, ending at last in the tyrannous rule of some single appetite or passion which has dethroned reason and set itself up as supreme. The consequence of it all is that "the most righteous man is also the happiest, and this is he who is the most royal master of himself; the worst and most unrighteous man is also the most miserable; this is he who is also the greatest tyrant of himself and the most complete slave." The reason why the life of a righteous man is happier than the life of an unrighteous man is that it has "a greater share in pure existence as a more real being." "If there be a pleasure in being filled with that which agrees with nature; that which is more really filled with more real being will have more real and true joy and pleasure; whereas, that which participates in less real being will be less truly and surely satisfied and will participate in a less true and real pleasure. Those, then, who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony and sensuality, never pass into the true upper world; neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they taste of true and abiding pleasure. Like brute animals, with their eyes down and bodies bent to the earth, or leaning on the dining table, they fatten and feed and breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; they kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they fill themselves with that which is not substantial, and the part of themselves which they fill is also unsubstantial and incontinent." "Thus when the whole soul follows the philosophical principle, and there is no division, the several parts, each of them, do their own business and are righteous, and each of them enjoy their own best and truest pleasures. But when either of the other principles prevails, it fails in attaining its own pleasure and compels the others to pursue after a shadow of pleasure which is not theirs."